The 5 Dangerous Realities of Social Media View more presentations from Jay Baer (summary of my keynote at Get Social PRSSA) The Crossroads: Social or Media? As social networking has soared to become the largest voluntary behavior this side of teeth brushing, the money guys have shown up on the scene – right on cue. […]

We hate math. Our abhorrence for calculation enables us to mutually agree on statistically dubious metrics with nary a shrug or arched eyebrow. Consider Nielsen ratings, which are used to determine the popularity of all TV shows and, consequently, how the dozens of billions of dollars in TV advertising is apportioned. Nielsen ratings have a […]

People say social media is unicorn, but it’s really just a horse. Sure, social media empowers customers like nothing before it. And of course, social media creates a new level of real-time accountability for companies previously accustomed to asynchronous communication. These are the ways social media is different. But in other ways, it’s largely the […]

People who say social media isn’t measurable aren’t looking very hard. The truth is that there are at least 25 viable metrics you can use to evaluate the success of your social media efforts. The challenge isn’t measurability, it’s knowing which measures are meaningful. Here are the 6 critically undervalued social media success metrics. Daily […]

Believing your customers are just like you – or homogenous in any way – is a psychological bear trap that is difficult for even the savviest marketer or executive to escape. It’s human nature. We figure that since we like tennis, and we know a few of our customers that like tennis, it stands to […]

There are four mandates that companies are adopting when they are examining and analyzing the success of their online marketing and social media programs. I recently gave a presentation to the Measured Marketing Roundtable at Techpoint, Indiana’s technology and economic development association, that outlines these new metric must-dos. The 4 Modern Metrics Mandates View more […]

Part 3 of a 3-Part Rant The time, money, and overall exertion being spent on customizing Facebook fan pages is largely misspent. Just because you CAN replicate much of your corporate website functionality on Facebook, doesn’t mean you SHOULD. Your Facebook fan page is not a collectible automobile. You do not get extra brand advocacy […]

Part 2 of a 3-Part Rant Brands are shouting from the rooftops about how many Facebook fans they have – and the number of “likes” does help you spread your message through the news feeds of your fans (more on that tomorrow). But let’s recognize it takes literally one click of one finger to “like” […]

Guest post by Simon Gornick, a content consultant specializing in short form slogans, and owner of The Tagline Machine. ROI in social media is a luxury. And the only brands that can accept that are likely to be big ones with multi-platform marketing budgets. The larger the brand, the more likely they are to use […]

New research from Sysomos shows that 92.4% of all retweets happen within the first hour after the tweet has been sent. This demonstrates that Twitter users are not browsing the public stream (or even their own lists) to find and interact with tweets from earlier in the day. Consequently, WHEN you send your tweets has […]

Guest post by Matt Ridings, founder of MSR Consulting, a Digital Relationship Marketing Agency in St. Louis. He’s @techguerilla on Twitter. I had an interesting phone call with a prospective client. I didn’t know him, and hadn’t worked with his (large) company. He was looking for a social media vendor, and was referred to me […]

Connectivity Social media brings me closer to people with whom I ordinarily would seldom interact. Family, friends, colleagues. As my co-author Amber Naslund put it once “with social media, my relationships aren’t bound by geography or circumstance.” Exactly. Humanity People always slam Twitter for people talking about “what they had for lunch” but the blending […]